For forming color images, there is known a process wherein three kinds of yellow, magenta, and cyan couplers are incorporated in light-sensitive emulsion layers, respectively, of a color photographic material and after imagewise exposing the color photographic material, processing it with a color developer containing an aromatic primary amine color developing agent, the oxidation product of which forms colored dyes by coupling reaction with the couplers. In this case, it is important to color a color photographic material containing silver halide in the smallest possible amount at a high efficiency in a limited development time.
For attaining an efficient coloration, it is necessary that the development of silver halide is proceeded as quick as possible without leaving the silver halide to be developed as it is. Also, it is important that in such a manner of development the oxidation products of the color developing agent are allowed to usefully react with the color couplers. For this purpose, it is known to use a silver halide showing high developing speed or a silver halide having high developing rate. A silver chloride emulsion or a silver chlorobromide emulsion is actually used for this purpose. Also, it is known that when such a silver halide cannot be used by some reasons, coloring is quickened and increased by increasing the coating amount of silver halide for the amount of color couplers. Furthermore, it is effective to use couplers having high coupling speed and to increase the developing activity of a color developer itself. Various methods have been proposed for increasing the development speed and coloring speed of a color developer. In these methods, it is necessary for forming dyes by the final coupling reaction of a color developing agent and couplers that the color developing agent itself enters coupler-dispersed oil drops. As additives for quickening the permeation of the color developing agent for accelerating coloring, various kinds of additives are known. As the additive having particularly high coloring accelerating effect, benzyl alcohol is known and it has hitherto been used for processing various kinds of color photographic materials and is widely used at present for processing color photographic papers.
Benzyl alcohol is poor in solubility in water, although it may be dissolved in water to some extent and, hence, for increasing the solubility thereof, it has been widely performed to use diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol or alkanolamine.
These compounds and benzyl alcohol itself, however, give a large load of pollution in processing waste solutions and give high BOD value and COD value and, hence, in spite of having the above-described advantages of improving coloring property of color developer and improving the solubility, it has been desired to reduce or eliminate benzyl alcohol from the point of waste solution disposal.
Furthermore, even when the aforesaid solvent such as diethylene glycol, etc., is used, the solubility of benzyl alcohol is yet insufficient and, hence, the existence of benzyl alcohol causes troubles in preparing color developer.
Also, if benzyl alcohol in color developer is carried over into a succeeding bath, i.e., a bleach bath or a blix bath, together with the color developer and accumulated therein, it causes the formation of a leuco compound of cyan dye according to the kind of cyan dye to reduce coloring density. Furthermore, the accumulation of benzyl alcohol makes it insufficient to wash out the developer components, in particular, color developing agent in wash step, which results in the deterioration of the storage stability of color images caused by the residues.
From the various viewpoints described above, it is very significant to reduce or eliminate benzyl alcohol in color developer.
In addition to the aforesaid problems, color laboratories are at present required to shorten the processing time in a trend of shortening the time for finish delivery of color prints.
A process of processing a silver halide photographic material containing cyan, magenta and yellow couplers having specific groups introduced thereto with a color developer containing no benzyl alcohol for 3 minutes is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 174836/84 and 177553/84 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application"). However, the development of a new quick processing process giving loss reduction of coloring density and less formation of fog even by rapidly processing color photographic materials with a color developer containing no benzyl alcohol for a color development time of less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds has been desired.
The object of this invention is, therefore, to provide a color image forming process giving less reduction of coloring density even by processing color photographic materials with a color developer containing substantially no benzyl alcohol in a short period of time of not more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and, in particular, the object of this invention is to provide a color image forming process using a color photographic materials which give less fog and are stable when processed under the aforesaid development conditions.